


Rust

by kira892



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Battle Angel AU, Cyborgs, M/M, very slight hints of kenhina
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 20:44:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18630943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira892/pseuds/kira892
Summary: Kuroo shrugs, grabbing hold of Bokuto’s ruined hand. It’s still hanging on to the wrist like an errant grape and Kuroo plucks it off with a small tug. He pats Bokuto’s cheek with his own fingers. “Someone is always maimed or dying around here, it’s not like this is anything new.” he says matter-of-factly.In their lines of work, they know that better than anyone but still, Bokuto’s eyes drop down to his lap, the line of his mouth flattening out into a solemn line. It’s been almost a year now, almost a year since Bokuto came to the city, a stranger delivered to a strange place, too violent and cruel. Kuroo tamps down a smile as he thinks back to salvaging that wreck of a body from the scrap yard, finding the brain inside still alive and perfectly preserved by the most advanced core he’d ever seen in a cyborg and then shortly after, wondering how a heart powered by an antimatter micro reactor can be as delicate as glass.





	Rust

**Author's Note:**

> In which Bokuto is a total-replacement cyborg and Kuroo and Kenma are his mechanics.  
> I know Alita: Battle Angel had mixed reviews and I'm still not even sure where I fall when it comes to opinion but hey, I liked the world enough to write this so,

Kenma finds him in the morning, half buried in strays and yesterday’s garbage. Bokuto wakes to the clicking of his tongue, calling to the  cats nosing at the piles of trash and prodding for scraps. Kenma doesn’t notice him at first, tired eyes skimming over the top half of a face peeking out at him from under a pile of black bags before doing a double take and squinting, as if trying to determine if Bokuto is real or just a fresh, post-dawn hallucination.

 

Bokuto manages a weak grin. He tries for a wave too, managing after a lot of effort to lift one mangled hand. It barely manages a twitch, warped metal and fried circuits giving a wheezing, alarming creak before what’s left of his palm breaks off at the wrist and almost falls off, barely hanging on to his arm by a few sturdy cables.

 

Kenma looks rumpled and exhausted, pale gray scrubs still stained with blood. Going by the level of disarray his hair is in and the dark circles under his eyes, he hasn’t slept. Again. Still though, one look at Bokuto’s arm has the light of fresh annoyance flooding into his face. He gives Bokuto a quick once over, tawny eyes instantly sharp and alert. He isn’t wearing a shirt so it’s easy for Kenma to zero in on Bokuto’s shoulder, assessing the torn wires poking out of the chasm between his shoulder socket and his arm with a deep frown. The joint is technically not snapped in two but just barely. He heaves out a sigh.

 

“Rough night?”

 

“The worst.” Bokuto says with an exaggerated nod, nudging a kitten away with his other hand when it started to nibble curiously at some exposed wires on his shoulder. It isn’t deterred, mewling in protest. It sniffs curiously at the synthetic skin hanging in tatters around the gouge it was exploring earlier before sticking its entire head in it.

 

Bokuto yelps and tries to shake the kitten off, sending startled cats and random pieces of garbage flying. His flailing only succeeds in pushing the kitten _into_ his shoulder socket and Kenma smacks him squarely on the head, swooping in and extricating the tiny kitten from Bokuto’s shoulder before it can slip further.

 

“Stop that, you could’ve hurt the cat.”

 

“I was trying not to!” Bokuto protested. “I was trying to get it out, there’s probably broken glass in there.”

 

Kenma quirks an eyebrow. “Probably?”

 

Bokuto shrugs as best he could with only one shoulder attached to his body and gestures  impassively at the very broken cybernetic one. He _knows_ he fell through someone’s window and got stabbed with some broken glass at least once but if its still there, “I can’t feel it.”

 

Kenma hums. “I hope the bounty was worth the patch up job you’ve brought us this morning.” he says, bending down to set the kitten and the bowl of leftovers down on the curb.

 

He extends one hand to Bokuto when he’s done and maybe someone should’ve recognized that it’s a bad idea, but since Kenma is too tired to think and Bokuto rarely does, it’s truly inevitable that they both go tumbling back into the trash when Bokuto, all 200 pounds of metal and muscle of him, grabs Kenma’s hand and tries to heave himself up.  

 

They knock over a garbage can and the loud clanging it makes as it hits the ground and rolls around in a half circle before crashing against the building behind them is loud enough to send someone barrelling through the front door in alarm, a wrench clutched in one hand.

 

“Kenma, what in the hell-??”

 

Kuroo stops when he sees them, blinking in surprise.

 

“The garbage is aggressive this morning Kuroo.” Kenma mumbles, face half squished against Bokuto’s chest.

 

Kuroo looks like he hasn’t slept either, wild hair barely contained by the red bandana tied over it and rumpled overalls stained with blood and scorch marks. Looks like Bokuto isn’t the only one who had a rough night.   

 

“So it is.” Kuroo smirks, hooking his wrench back to his belt and crossing his arms over his chest. “Leave it there, it’s hideous.”

 

“Hey!” Bokuto starts but before he can say anything else, Kenma  climbs to his feet, dislodging everything that’s been shielding Bokuto from view and uncovering the full scope of the damage. His torso is mostly in one piece although big chunks of skin have been ripped off, leaving sparking wires and ruined cybernetics exposed. The mechanical carnage spans from Bokuto’s shoulder to almost all the way down to his waist.

 

Kuroo’s eyebrows slowly climb up to his forehead and nods down at the mess Bokuto’s made of himself. “Hideous. Did you fight a garbage disposal?”

 

“Close.” Bokuto says, sitting up and planting his good hand on the ground. “He had a shreddy thingie in his chest. Bunch of those circle...ish blades, the spiky ones?”

 

He manages to push himself up to a crouch with just one side of his body and when he wobbles dangerously, he grabs on to Kenma’s leg.

 

“Mmm.” Kuroo hums thoughtfully. “Buzzsaw Boobs.”

 

Bokuto lights up with a grin and points at him. “Buzzsaw Boobs!” He agrees. He tries to snap his fingers too for emphasis, forgetting that his dominant hand is barely attached to his body. The metal joints somehow manage to still move and even barely slide together but still, his middle finger breaks off completely and drops to the floor with a clang. The three of them just stare at it for a moment before Kuroo sighs and bends down to hoist him up.

 

“Alright shreddy, let’s get you inside before you lose any more parts.”

 

With some effort on everyone’s part, they manage to get Bokuto inside without causing any further damage. A metallic clicking snaps through the air every time he takes a step  so the process is slow and a little nerve-wracking but with an arm around Kenma and Kuroo’s shoulders, they get him to Kuroo’s workstation and safely down onto the examination table.

 

The clinic is empty save for the three of them. The cot near the front door is conspicuously stripped of bedding, thin grey mattress marked with fresh stains. As dirty as it is, they still stand out; dark and blotchy, the color of wet rust. Bokuto finds himself staring at them in morbid fascination as Kuroo and Kenma bustle around him, murmuring to each other as they go. He wonders how long it took for the red to fade, wonders if he knew the answer to that once upon a time.

 

“We got a live one yesterday. He’s still live, just in case you were wondering.”

 

Kuroo tells him, settling down beside the table and immediately getting to work on Bukuto’s shoulder. Bokuto looks away from the cot to tilt his head at him curiously.

 

“What happened?”

 

“Good’ole black market theft.” Kuroo says, reaching into Bokuto’s shoulder with one hand. “Some snatchers cut open the poor kid’s legs and stole a bunch of bones. He was lucky they weren’t after his spine.” Kuroo grunts as he twists something loose and pops Bokuto’s ruined arm out from his shoulder socket with his bare hands. He whistles.

 

“Please tell me you collected at least. I’m surprised this was still on there.” Kuroo says, tapping the arm against Bokuto’s shoulder. “So many things are missing here I probably could’ve taken it off if I just pulled hard enough.”

 

“What happened to the kid? Is he alright?”  Bokuto asks, brows furrowed in a deep frown. He barely seems to have heard what Kuroo said about his arm. Kuroo stares at him before shaking his head with a soft chuckle.

 

“You’re scrap metal and you’re more worried about someone you don’t even know.”

 

“I’m a hunter-warrior, isn’t it kind my job to worry about people?”

 

Kuroo wants to tell him that it really isn’t but he opts to simply raise his brows in silence. Still though, Bokuto huffs at the non-answer and frowns at him when Kuroo reaches down and slides out the drawer of temporary spares he keeps under the table.

 

“I got enough credits to pay for the patch up and maybe even take you out to a nice date after, to answer your question.” Bokuto says, frown temporarily forgotten as he puffs up his chest and looks very proud for someone who barely dragged himself to their door and passed out in the garbage.

 

Kuroo gives him an indulgent smile anyway, withholding comment once again. He leans in close to get a good, long look at Bokuto’s damaged torso and hums thoughtfully. “You’d have to let me sleep first. Your torso’s pretty fucked up but fixable but we’re probably looking at a total rebuild for the arm.”

 

Bokuto winces. “Sorry.”

 

Kuroo shrugs, grabbing hold of Bokuto’s ruined hand. It’s still hanging on to the wrist like an errant grape and Kuroo plucks it off with a small tug. He pats Bokuto’s cheek with his own fingers. “Someone is always maimed or dying around here, it’s not like this is anything new.” he says matter-of-factly.

 

In their lines of work, they know that better than anyone but still, Bokuto’s eyes drop down to his lap, the line of his mouth flattening out into a solemn line. It’s been almost a year now, almost a year since Bokuto came to the city, a stranger delivered to a strange place, too violent and cruel. Kuroo tamps down a smile as he thinks back to salvaging that wreck of a body from the scrap yard, finding the brain inside still alive and perfectly preserved by the most advanced core he’d ever seen in a cyborg and then shortly after, wondering how a heart powered by an antimatter micro reactor can be as delicate as glass.  

 

“The kid is fine, pumped to the eyeballs with painkillers and high as a fucking kite but he’s stable, was even conscious when we got him settled down in the infirmary. To answer your question.” Kuroo parrots, leaning over to strap the prosthetic arm to Bokuto’s shoulder.

 

“Kenma’s checking on him right now. I think.” He continues, looking over his own shoulder at the door leading to their small isolation ward for their more sensitive cases. “Either that or he’s passed out in a corner somewhere.”

 

As if summoned, Kenma walks through the door looking still exhausted, a little harried but ultimately awake.

 

“Did the shrimp die while we weren’t looking?” Kuroo asks.

 

“Fading in and out. ” Kenma says. “He asked me if I was an angel.” Only after the words are out of his mouth does he look bewildered. The frown on his face says he’s wondering if maybe he hallucinated what he just said.

 

If the kid had died, Kuroo’s laugh would’ve been loud enough to wake him up. It’s a testament to how tired he is that Kenma _leaps_ at the sound, dropping the bowl of bloodied rags and used syringes he was holding. He glares.

 

Kuroo has the decency to look sorry, even if his brand of sorry looks really smirk-y.

 

“That kid’s going to be just fine, I can feel it. Go to bed, I’ll finish up here.”

 

Kenma looks unsure. He lingers for a second, unmoving until Kuroo _shoo_ -s him, complete with two handed flick of his fingers and sound effect. Appropriately, Kenma looks like an unimpressed cat but he doesn’t argue. He glances between them meaningfully and without another word, turns and disappears to the back of the clinic, presumably to very quickly clean up and pass out on the closest available surface.

 

After he’s gone, Kuroo turns back to him with a grin. “Right then, time to get you naked and wet.”

 

============================

 

Ten minutes later, Bokuto finds himself sitting buck-ass nude on cold tile, being sprayed down with a power hose strong enough to strip skin off of human flesh. He’s curled up in the smallest ball he can fold himself into with Kuroo’s long, pointy limbs caging him in on all sides. Something that, even with half his nerve receptors fried, is far from comfortable.

 

There’s barely any space in the stall wedged in the back corner of Kuroo’s workstation. The thing is barely two walls put up around the smallest corner of the room. Kuroo usually uses it to hose down parts so that being said, Kuroo basically has to be right on top of him in a very un-sexy way to wash the extra dirt and stench he accumulated in the trash.

 

“This is way less fun than it sounded.”  he mumbles as Kuroo upends a bucket of lukewarm soap water over his shoulders and immediately follows it up with another blast from the power hose.

 

“I mean, I could’ve just taken out the bleach and dumped it all over you. So this is slightly more sexy, I would argue.”  Kuroo replies easily. “If you just made it a few more feet and avoided the garbage, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Duck.”

 

Bokuto’s reply is muffled into his knees as Kuroo rinses off the back of his neck. “What can I say? The garbage is my home.”

 

That earns him a chortle and Bokuto smiles in turn, turning his head a little to try and peek back at Kuroo from his knees.

 

“Hey, Tetsurou?”

 

At the mention of his first name, Kuroo pauses in picking out the smaller bits of debris out of the tears along Bokuto’s side and looks to him curiously.

 

“Why did you pull me out of the scrapyard?”

 

Kuroo just stares at him for a bit, face carefully blank. He seems to be thoroughly considering the question, trying to parse it down to the last shred of meaning. Then, as if remembering it’s Bokuto he’s talking to, he smiles, shrugs.

 

“Isn’t it kind of my job to worry about people?” he reaches over to push Bokuto’s soaked bangs back from his eyes. “Also, Iwaizumi was pushing three years with Oikawa at that point. I figured if he can find a quality relationship in the garbage, so can I.”

 

They both giggle as Kuroo straightens up to his full height and Bokuto waits until he backs up halfway out of the stall to unfurl and pull himself up to his feet before speaking.

 

“I’m glad you did. Pull me from the scraps and find a quality boyfriend, I mean.”

 

Kuroo tilts his head at him curiously. “Me too obviously but what brought this on all of a sudden?”

 

Knowing how awkwardly Kuroo handles impromptu sappy declarations of emotion, no matter how sincere, Bokuto is pretty sure saying things like “Your face is the first thing I remember seeing but I doubt that has anything to do with the fact that you were the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and I feel like I should always tell you” wouldn’t be received as well as he would like it to be so he just shrugs.

 

“I was just a brain without anything in it. Everything I have now is because of you.”

 

Kuroo almost manages to suppress his reaction to that. Almost.

 

“I mean, you didn’t even know me. Hell, _I_ didn’t even know me and you built me a whole body and gave me a place to stay. I could’ve been a psycho for all we knew...I don’t know, just. It was scary not knowing anything but I knew that you were kind and that’s pretty awesome. Thank you... and I love you, is I guess what I’m trying to say.”

 

Kuroo doesn’t say anything for several long seconds.

 

“Are you dying?”

 

“Wh- no?? Wouldn’t you know that better than me?”

 

“Am I dying?”

 

Bokuto tries not to deflate. “Kurooooo, come on. I was trying to be romantic here.”

 

“How is the pressure feedback and texture sensors on your face?”

 

“Fine? I can definitely feel the water and-”

 

-and he can definitely feel Kuroo’s mouth on his, Kuroo’s rough fingers cradling the back of his neck. Bokuto’s eyes close of their own accord and his hands come up to pull Kuroo closer, sighing into the kiss as he tilts his head to slide their lips together more firmly.

 

Kuroo pulls away first with a low breathless chuckle. “You’re so weird. Cute, but weird.”

 

“ _You’re_ weird.” Bokuto shoots back eloquently, reaching up to wind his arms around Kuroo’s neck and pressing closer so they’re standing chest to chest with barely any space between their bodies.

 

“It’s fine, I had to change out of these anyway.” Kuroo says, glancing down at all the water seeping into his clothes and making absolutely no move to pull away.

 

“Does it bother you? That I don’t know who I was?”

 

Kuroo’s eyes slowly make their way back up to Bokuto’s face at the somber question. He doesn’t ask about it this time, used to Bokuto’s sudden mood swings and especially familiar with _this_ mood in particular. He wonders what snippets he remembered this time, if they were as violent and grim as what little else he’s managed to get back.

 

“No. It doesn’t.”

 

Whoever Bokuto was is lost to the literal centuries, possibly more. He may never be that person again. He doesn’t tell Bokuto this, what he does say is what matters.

 

“I only know you now and I’ll only know who you’ll be from here. That’s more than enough for me.” he murmurs, pressing their foreheads together. “You’re the best thing I ever pulled out of the trash.”

 

Bokuto snorts and rears back a bit to butt their heads together. “You’re awful.”

 

Kuroo knows that this isn’t the last time they’re going to have this conversation but for now, Bokuto seems content to let the subject drop.

 

“I saw someone die yesterday.” Bokuto offers and whether he meant in real life or in the dark, murky corners of his own mind, Kuroo doesn’t know nor does he ask.

 

“I saw someone live yesterday.” Kuroo rests a hand on Bokuto’s chest. “And maybe you didn’t see them but a lot of other people lived yesterday too.” He smirks. “You took Buzzsaw Boobs to the chest so they don’t have to.”  

 

Bokuto laughs but though the sound isn’t as jubilant as it usually is, the sigh he muffles into Kuroo’s neck sounds relieved.

 

“I’m tired. Lets go to bed.”

 

Kuroo kisses his temple. “Yeah. Let’s.”

 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at [tsukkibigbitchenergykei](https://tsukkibigbitchenergykei.tumblr.com/)


End file.
